1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to apparatus for feeding articles, and more particularly, the present invention relates to apparatus for successively feeding fruit at high rates.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Juice extractors of the interdigitating cup type disclosed in the U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,780,988 to W. C. Belk et al and 2,649,730 to J. M. Hait have been used for many years to extract juice from citrus fruit. Over the years, this type of extractor has been operated at increasingly higher rates of speed and is now run at a speed of about 100 fruit per extractor cup per minute. To feed fruit to the extractor cups at such high rates, a feeding apparatus as shown and described in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,040,864 to W. C. Belk was developed.
The fruit feeding apparatus of U.S. Pat. No. 3,040,864 is designed to concurrently feed several fruit at several transversely spaced pick-up stations to the stationary lower cups of the extractor. The feeding apparatus includes a reel which is rotated synchronously with the movement of the upper cups of the extractor with finger units being attached to the reel in alignment with each pick-up station and with each finger unit having a cam follower projecting therefrom. A central camshaft having stationary cam discs thereon is provided to pivot the cam followers of the finger units. The cam discs are contoured to cause the finger units to initially engage a fruit and to thereafter elevate the fruit so that the finger unit moves at a relatively slow speed corresponding to the speed of rotation of the reel. The cam discs are further designed to cause the fingers to pivot rapidly forward after the fruit has been raised to a height where it may be thrown into the adjacent extractor cup to thereby rapidly accelerate the fruit and eject it into the cup at a high velocity. This prior art feeding apparatus receives fruit from a vibratory hopper and further includes several arched bridges that extend from fruit supports at the pick-up stations adjacent the lower end of the fruit hopper to near the lower cups of the extractor. The several finger units are each attached to the reel to straddle a bridge so as to propel or slide the fruit along the bridge to the upper end of the bridge and thereafter to rapidly propel the fruit over a horizontal downstream section of the bridge into the associated lower extractor cup.
A new extractor has been designed to operate at a much higher speed than the aforementioned extractor. Such new extractor also includes several pairs of interdigitating cups, but the upper extractor cups are operated sequentially rather than concurrently. This new sequential extractor is described in a copending concurrently filed U.S. patent application, Ser. No. 120,966, filed Feb. 13, 1980, of Gregory J. Larsen et al entitled Citrus Fruit Extractor. The sequential citrus fruit juice extractor described and claimed in such copending application is capable of operating at a speed in excess of 150 fruit per cup per minute. At such a high speed, the cups of the extractor are only open to receive fruit for a very short time period. It will be understood that a feeder must be provided to feed fruit to such new extractor which feeder is capable of ejecting the fruit at sufficiently high velocities so they may be fed into the cups of the extractor during such short time period.
The high speed feed mechanism of U.S. Pat. No. 3,040,864 has been heretofore used only in connection with the prior art interdigitating cup extractors wherein all of the upper cups are simultaneously raised or lowered. If this type of rotary feeder were to be modified for sequential operation, a separate arrangement of a reel, several finger units and cam discs would be needed at each and every fruit feeding station. Thus, the modified feeder would be very complex and expensive to manufacture, and there would not be sufficient space between the individual feed reels to permit the discharge of fruit that failed to be picked up by the feeder.